083. Mightier Dead Than Alive

Mightier Dead Than Alive

Jdg_16:30 : ’93So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’94

Samson in the text was deified and became the Hercules of Greece. He was a giant warrior, born to be a leader, and Paul applauds him as a man who ’93through faith subdued kingdoms.’94 He was a friend of God and an enemy of unrighteousness. But the most memorable scene in his life was the death-scene. The Philistines, his enemies, gathered round him in a great building to mock him. With supernatural strength he laid hold of the pillars and flung everything into ruin, destroying the lives of the three thousand scoffers, among them the lords of Philistia. He had slain many of the enemies of God during his life; but my text says his last achievement was the mightiest. ’93So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’94 It is sometimes the case that after a most industrious, useful, and eminent life, the last hours are more potent than the long years that preceded.

In the overshadowing event of this day we find illustrations of my text. President Garfield, as many orators will say, was all his life the enemy of sin, the enemy of sectionalism, the enemy of everything small-hearted; impure and debasing, and he made many a crushing blow against those moral and political Philistines, but in his death he made mightier conquest. The eleven weeks of dying have made more illustrious record than the fifty years of living. ’93So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’94

As a matter of inspiration and comfort, I propose to show you that President Garfield’92s expiration is a mightier good than a prolonged lifetime possibly could be. Mind you, there was no time at which his deathbed could have been so emphatic. If he had died a few years before, his departure would not have been so conspicuous. If he had died one month before, his administration would not have been fairly launched. If he had died six months later, his advanced policy of reform would have cut the friendship of a great multitude, and if he had died years after, he would! have been out of office and in the decline of life. But he died at the time when all parties had turned to him with unparalleled expectation. There has not been a time in all the fifty years of his past when his deathbed could have been so effective; and in the next fifty years there could not have been a time when his deathbed would have been so overwhelmingly impressive. ’93So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’94

First, our President’92s death, more than his life, eulogizes the Christian religion. We all talk about the hope of the Christian and the courage of the Christian and the patience of the Christian. Put all the sermons on these subjects for the last twenty years together, and they would not make such an impression as the magnificent demeanor of this dying Chief Magistrate.

He was no more afraid to die than you are to go home this morning. Without one word of complaint he endures an anguish that his autopsy alone could reveal to the astonished world. For eighty days in inquisition of pain, yet often smiling, often facetious, always calm, giving military salute to a soldier who happened to look in at the window, talking with Cabinet officers about the affairs of state, reading the public bulletins in regard to his condition, watching his own pulse; and so undisturbed of soul that I warrant you if it had not been for his dependent family and the nation, whom he wanted to serve, he would have been glad to depart any time right up to the God who made him, and the Christ who redeemed him, and the Holy Ghost who comforted him.

Oh, sirs! all he ever did in confirmation of religion in days of health was nothing compared with what he did for it in this last crisis. James A. Garfield learned his religion from his mother in the days when she was trying in widowhood and poverty to bring up her boys aright; from that same old mother that sat with her Bible in her lap in her bedroom last Tuesday morning, when the dreadful news came that her son was dead. James A. Garfield had no new religion to experiment with in his last hours. It was the same Gospel into the faith of which he was baptized, when in early manhood he was immersed in the river in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. That religion had stood the test through all the buffetings and persecutions, through the hard work of life, and did not forsake him in the solemn close. There have been thousands of deathbeds as calm and beautiful as this, but they were not so conspicuous. This electrifies Christendom. This encourages all the pain-struck in hospitals, and scattered all up and down the world, to suffer patiently. The consumptive, the cancered, and the palsied, and the fevered, and the dying of all nations lift their heads from their hot pillows, and bless this heroic, this triumphant, this illustrious sufferer. The religion that upheld him under surgeon’92s knife, and amid the appalling days and nights at Long Branch and at Washington, is a good religion to have. Show us in all the ages among the enemies of Christianity a deathbed that will compare with this radiant sunset!

Again, our President’92s death will do more for the consummation of right feeling between North and South than all his administration of four years could have accomplished. This is not ’93shaking hands across the bloody chasm,’94 according to the rhetoric of campaign documents. This is shaking hands across the palpitating heart that was large enough to take in both sections. This expiring man took the hand of the North and the hand of the South and joined them together, and practically said, with a dying pathos that can never be forgotten: ’93Be brothers!’94 Where now are the flags at half mast? At New Orleans and Boston, Chicago and Charleston. There is absolutely today no Republican party and no Democratic party. A new party has swallowed up all’97a party of national sympathy. The bulletins on the south side of Mason and Dixon’92s line have been as carefully watched as on the north side. We have been trying to arbitrate old difficulties and settle old grudges, yet the old quarrel has ever and anon broken out in a new place. But this requiem which shakes the land forever drowns out all sectional discords. After all that has been done and said during the last eleven weeks the people of the South will be welcome in all our homes as we shall be welcome in theirs. He who tries hereafter to kindle the old fires of hatred will find little fuel and no sulphurous match. Alabama and Massachusetts, stand up and be married! South Carolina and New York, join hands in betrothal! Georgia and Ohio, I pronounce you one! Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. The seal is set by the cold, emaciated hand of our dead President. No living man could have accomplished it. More of the sectional prejudices, and the misinterpretations, and the bitternesses of old war times have perished in the last eleven weeks than in all the seventeen years since the war ended; and so the dead which Garfield slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his whole life.

Again, President Garfield’92s sickness and death have educated the world, as all his life and the life of a thousand men beside could not have educated it in the wonders of the human body. For the last two months all Christendom has been studying anatomy and physiology. Never since the world stood has there been so much known about respiration, about pulsation, about temperature, about gunshot wounds, about febrile rise, about digestion, about convalescence. The vast majority of the race have hitherto wandered about stupidly ignorant of this masterpiece of God, the human mechanism. The last eleven weeks have educated ten thousand nurses for the sick. The invalids of all lands for this experience will have better attendance, more kindness, more opportunity for restoration. Never has there been such examination of dictionaries to find the meaning of a medical phrase. One new word of the morning bulletins has set the leaves of all the lexicons in America a-flutter. Garfield, during his life, had often talked on these themes in college class-rooms and on lecture platforms, and he was a scientist in these things, but he did more for the slaying of popular ignorance on this subject in his death than he did in all his life.

Since the time when David the Psalmist, probably returned from an Oriental dissecting-room, wrote the autopsy, ’93We are fearfully and wonderfully made,’94 and Solomon, who was wise in physiology as well as in everything else, called the spinal marrow the silver cord (or ’93ever the silver cord be loosed’94), and called the head the ’93golden bowl,’94 because the skull is round like a bowl, and the membrane which contains the brain is yellow like gold (or ’93the golden bowl be broken’94); and called the veins of the human body a pitcher, because they carry the crimson liquid from the heart, the fountain, all through all the organs of the body (or ’93the pitcher be broken at the fountain’94); and called the lungs a wheel, because they draw to themselves and let go away like a well-bucket, and called the stomach the cistern (the ’93wheel broken at the cistern’94) and showed that he knew what Harvey thought he was discovering thousands of years after concerning the circulation of the blood’97I say since those obscure times down to these days, when all physicians are busy instructing the people, and all medical colleges, and all high schools, are scattering physiological and anatomical information, there has never been so much wisdom on these subjects as today; and the most potent of all the teachers has been the sick and dying bed of our President, mightier in his death than in his life.

Again, these last scenes must impress the world, as no preachment ever did, that when our time comes to go, the most energetic and skilful physicians cannot hinder the event. Was there ever so much done to save a man’92s life as the life of President Garfield? Is the season too hot, there is manufactured for his sick room in August an October day. Is he to be transported to the seaside? all the wheels and all the steam whistles and all the voices along the line of progress are hushed for two hundred miles, and a new section of railroad is built to let him pass over. Added to the medical skill of the Capital are the skill of Philadelphia and New York. All the medical ingenuity of the last three hundred years flashes its electric light upon the wound. Paris and London and Edinburgh applaud the treatment. He had all the courage that comes from the hand of a wife who was sure he would get well. He had physicians who did not stand with cold, scientific calculation, studying the case; but splendid men whose hearts grew strong or faint as the patient’92s pulse was strong or faint, and they were as great nurses as they were great surgeons. But the doctors could not keep him. His wife could not keep him. All the arms of five children hung around his neck could not keep him. His great spirit pushes them all back from the gates of life, and soars away into the infinities. My Lord and My God! solemnize us with this consideration.

My hearer, if you and I were sick I am sure we would have good medical attendance and good nursing, plenty of watchers and plenty of attendants. The world is naturally very kind to the sick. We who have good homes would have sympathetic though trembling hands to hold ours in the last exigency. We all have those who love us as we love them, but when the time fixed by the merciful God arrives we must be off. There is no need of our getting nervous about it or fretting about it. All we have to do is to keep our hearts right with God and do our best, and then be as unfluttered as was our dying President. After the mightiest surgery of America and the world had to surrender on that Monday night at the stroke of the Death Angel, surely we cannot resist it!

In the emphasizing of all these great truths, James A. Garfield is mightier lying on his catafalque at Cleveland than in the White House receiving the honors of foreign embassage. Who knows but that his death will save millions of people for this world and the next? Fifty millions of people’97nay, North and South America, and Europe, and parts of Asia’97called to thoughts of mortality and the great future! Who knows but it may awaken whole nations from the death of sin to the life of the Gospel? When last week I saw one line of mourning from Detroit, Michigan, to Brooklyn, I wondered if God would not use this great grief for the purification of the nation. O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the nation! Enough the Sabbath breakings, and the impurities, and the blasphemy, and the official corruption in this country! By the result of this terrific event let these dogs of hell be driven back to their fiery kennels. Against all these evils the Presidential giant is mightier dead than when alive.

But while the nation has this comfort there are three words that will leap to our lips, and they have been reiterated oftener than any other words for the past few days. Poor Mrs. Garfield! More pathetic words I never read than these in the Friday newspapers which said that with two of her children she had gone over to the White House to get the property of her family and have it sent to her home in Ohio. Can you imagine anything more full of torture than to walk through the room filled with associations of her husband’92s kindness, of her husband’92s anxieties, and of her husband’92s long-continued physical anguish?

She had with her womanly arms fought by his side all the way up the steep of life. She had helped him in their economies when they were very poor; with her own needle clothing their family, with her own hands making him bread. When the world frowned upon him in the days of scandalous assault she never forsook his side. They had together won the battle, and had seated themselves at the very top to enjoy the victory. Then the blow came. What a reversal of fortune! From what midnoon to what midnight! It is said that this will kill her. I do not believe it. The God who has helped her thus far will help her all the way through. When the broken circle gathers in the future days at the old home at Mentor, the mighty God who protected James A. Garfield at Chickamauga and in the fiery hell of many battles will protect his wife, his children, and his old mother.

Upon all the seven broken hearts let the comfort descend! What consolations they have! It was a great thing to have had such a son! It was a great thing to have been the wife of such a man! It was a great thing to have been the children of such a father! While theirs and ours is the grief, I am glad on his account that he has gone. He had suffered enough. Enough the cut of the lancets, and the thrusts of the catheter, and the pangs of head and side and feet and back! Ascend, oh, disenthralled spirit, and take thy place with those who came out of great tribulation, and had their robes made white in the blood of the Lamb!

This Samson of intellectual strength, this giant of moral power, had’97like the one in the text’97in other days slain the lion of wrathful opposition, and had carried off the gates of wrong from the rusted hinges. But the peroration of his life is stronger than any passage which went before. The dead which this giant slew in his death were more than those whom he slew in his life.

May we all learn the practical lessons with which our subject is filled! Behold the contrast between Friday, the fourth of March, 1881, and Friday, the twenty-third of September, 1881! On the former day Washington was ablaze with banners. Each State of the Union had its triumphal arch. Great men of this country and vast populations filled the streets! Procession such as had never moved from the White House and the Capitol! Military display that would have confounded hostile nations. The city shaken with cannonading by day, and the night on fire with pyrotechnics! Thousands of all political parties who congratulated the President pronounced that fourth of March the brightest day that had ever shone on American institutions. That night, or soon after, in some room of the Presidential mansion, I warrant you, there assembled husband and wife and five children, and the aged mother, taking a long breath after the excitement of the inauguration. The highest point of honor that mortal man can reach had been won.

But behold Friday, September 23d, the dead President in the Rotunda, his bereaved wife at a friend’92s house; a dangerously sick child four hundred miles away at Williamstown, Mass.; military on guard around the casket; hundreds of thousands of people gazing on the face so emaciated that none would know it; the poor black woman falling on her knees beside the coffin, expressing the anguish of speechless multitudes when she said: ’93Oh, dear! how he must have suffered!’94 Friday, fourth of March, 1881! Friday, September 23, 1881!

To the words of comfort I have uttered today I add this lesson, which seems to sound out from the tramp of pall-bearers and from the rolling of the draped rail-train moving westward, and from the open grave now waiting to receive our dead President: ’93Put not your trust in princes nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’94 Fare thee well, departed chieftain!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage